1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejection apparatus which performs a drawing operation by ejecting a liquid from a nozzle of inkjet recording devices, display manufacturing devices, electrode forming devices, biochip manufacturing devices, etc.
2. Related Art
In the related art, the inkjet printers (hereinafter, referred to as ‘printer’) suitable for performing a printing operation on a sheet of paper is known as a liquid (ink) ejecting apparatus. Generally, the printer is configured such that a head provided with a fine nozzle for ejecting a liquid (ink) is movably arranged while facing a paper.
In the printers, if the ink in nozzle become dehydrated, it makes difficult to perform a normal ejection. Therefore, the technick or recovering from drying and suppress the drying, becomes important. Essentially, a printer has a cap for sealing (capping) a nozzle opening, so the printer is made to suppress drying of ink in the nozzle by performing capping during non-operating time.
Additionally, it is also well known printers that recovers and sustains a ejection capability by ejecting ink outside a sheet of paper when a drawing is operated at start, end or in the meanwhile and thereby exchanging to new ink from old ink which is progressed drying in a nozzle. The ejection for nozzle maintenance is called a preliminary ejection operation, and most of the ejection is performed into the cap.
In the related art, an absorber is provided to sustain ink inside the cap. The sealing space by the capping is kept in high humidity by the moisture of the ink sustained in the absorber. Nevertheless, in the printer accompanied with the preliminary ejection operation as mentioned above, sometimes the preliminary ejected ink is more accelerated drying inside nozzle when the nozzle is capped. That is, because a moisturizer (glycerin etc.) of the ink accompanied with progression of preliminary ejection history is accumulated to the absorber in condition of missing the sustaining moisture. Therefore, it acts actively to deprive of moisture from the ink in the nozzle when capping is operating.
To consider the above, first, the applicant of the present application filed about the invention related to a cap structure of no-remaining ink inside the cap. (Patent Document 1)    Patent Document 1: JP-A-2003-251828
However, in patent document 1 related to the cap, the cap suppress the trouble from moisturizer in the ink described above. By contrast there is no moisture sustaining function at the same time, as a result the cap is not possible enough to suppress drying in the nozzle under long abandoned period.
Further, in the configuration of the cap remaining the absorber, even if a forced discharge of the preliminary ejected ink by using a suction unit communicated with the cap is tried to operate, since that ink has high viscosity already to lose the large amount of moisture, the ink may not be almost ejected.